Doom Buggy Down!

I'm sure by now you had a good chuckle over my car ending up in the ditch. I know I did, especially when it ran great after being dragged out by a tow truck operator who didn't want to get any closer to the VA than he had to for fear of being sued by the government for potential damage to property (I'm not lying!). All the damage, if any, was to the A-frame, and not to anything important, he swore. So what have we learned, class? Yep. Never listen to tow truck operators!

So this morning I was driving along to work, once again happy that my baby was not showing the slightest bit of trouble following her ditch diving. However, when I pulled up to a stoplight and went to shift into first gear, the gear shift went all over the place. No resistance, no sign that I was in anything but neutral. So I'm stuck, in rush hour morning commute traffic, with a car that doesn't want to go.

Two hours of comedy of errors craziness (cell phone dying, trying to get another tow truck - not with the same company, mind you - getting preached to by the tow truck operator, and wondering if I was ever going to make it to the garage alive) I finally made it to work. Now I am awaiting word from the mechanics on how much the repairs are going to cost. Meanwhile, One Ring and I are preparing for a trip down to a meeting with the denomination high mucky-mucks to get some paperwork settled so I can apply for the VA jobs.

So I send the following to the Divine Head Office: Attention, God. Hi. Remember me? Hope so. Anyway, I'm having a time of it between the job stress, job hunting stress, and denomination stress. Now the car that I desperately need is down for the count. Any chance I can get some help and avoid financial and emotional ruin? Thanks. I'll try to be a better pirate chaplain, too. As always, if there's anything you need me to do, let me know. We don't have many bushes that'll burn around here (flame retardant bushes are government regulation, you know), but I'm sure you can figure out a way to drop me a line.

Sincerely, humbly, grovellingly, I am. etc. etc.